We're All in our Places

Good morning, my friends. Except for my weekend of sloth, it feels as if I've passed through a string of busy days. In this case, "busy" refers to the fact that I've had almost no time in my sewing room. This makes for an unhappy camper, even when we're not camping. Today promises to be a little less hectic, and I'm hopeful I can get a little more done on my challenge piece.

This morning started with two laps containing two cats. Sadie likes to be squished between my legs and wrapped up in her flannel quilt.

Smitty purrfers the window seat on Mike's lap.

It was a grocery shopping day yesterday. We had a couple of other errands to run in town as well. It was past lunch time when we got home. As usual, any trip into town requires an after-lunch nap. And so it was fairly late in the day before I had time to work on my challenge quilt. I've had a little trouble with it. Here's a little peek at my template to give you some idea what I'm talking about without giving anything away. My piece consists of a lot of parallel lines of fabric around the outer edges. (The "x's" indicate I've already done those pieces.)

As I moved from bottom to top, somehow my pieces were no longer fitting the template. It was squished down shorter than it should be. I continued on with what I was doing, but eventually realized I was going to run into trouble if I didn't fix it. I'd worked my way along, and then laid the template over the whole, which helped me decide how to fix it with the least amount of trouble. As it turns out, I'll need to redo the six corner pieces moving from left to right in the image above. I was able to remove those without any problem. When I left it it looked like this...just a peek for you.

 

Don't let those brown sections fool you. That's just the teflon pressing sheet I'm working from. The only actual parts of the quilt are the ones with colors other than brown. Oh yes, and that bright spot is glare from my camera flash. With those hints, you should be able to see what I'm doing plain as day. No? So, I'll start by redoing the parts I've removed first thing today, and then I'll continue on my merry way as if nothing bad happened. Also, I'll be happier down the road.

It was time to stop when I had it that far. I realized the image above was the only picture I'd taken all day. It seemed like a good time to take a walk around the house and see what's going on in Flowerville. This next photo is the rhododendron farthest from the house at the bottom of the herb garden.

It is alive with bumblebees. They move from flower to flower so fast, it's hard to get a very good picture of them.

This next one is the purple rhodie around the front side of the house. You can also see the blooming dogwood behind it at the top of the image.

Near the dappled willow, this red azalea is putting on its best show of the year.

I was happy to see the white azalea has put on more flowers, but all on one side of the plant. We're hopeful it will come back. It seems as if it was hard hit by the winter snow.

And here's the dappled willow. It adds more length to its pinkish foliage every day.

It's not exactly like a flower, but it gives the appearance of one. Eventually, this will all turn green.

We're on serious peony watch right now. There are about a dozen buds showing the flower petals inside. Each day I expect to see at least one has opened, but nothing so far. The past few days have been on the cool-ish side, but we're expecting warmer weather today and at least until the weekend. Maybe that will get them going.

And look at the size of these poppy buds. There are dozens of these between the two plants. I expect they still have a little time left. We'll probably see the peonies first.

This next one is known as a "Burning Bush." Its leaves will turn bright red in the fall. In spring, it produces these tiny white flowers. For scale, I'll say the leaves are approximately the size of a bay leaf.

Sadie was in her catio while I was walking around. She was put out that she wasn't included. She has a very bad habit of being impossible to get inside sometimes. With the day coming to a close, I was too tired to want to chase her down.

When I came upstairs to write this post, Sadie was even more firmly entrenched in her quilt.

Smitty was settling in for a warm morning sunbath.

Today I'll want to hoe some weeds, and I have one housekeeping chore on the to-do list. The rest of the day will be spent sewing. I'm close to finishing up my current embroidery, which will bring me to the "Short" piece on my dance card. I asked Mr. Random to tell me what my next piece would be, and he selected this one: "Dwell in Possibility."

It's another of the designs I purchased as an instant download from Gingiber. The download seemed small to me, and so I increased its size by 50%. I still need to trace the design onto fabric, but I've selected the floss colors I'll use. It'll be stitched in the colors of a monarch butterfly.

As I mentioned yesterday, these two children are celebrating 48 years of marriage today.

I can't remember if I've ever posted this picture before, and so there are a couple of things I want to say about it. First, my mom made my dress and veil. The little cap on my head was borrowed from the woman who was my matron of honor. I returned it to her with veil attached after the wedding. She hoped her daughter would wear it one day. I lost touch with her many years ago, and my efforts to find her again have failed. I only hope she's still alive and we'll find one another again someday. 

Also, Mike was a florist before he was an engineer. He started working for the man who owned the flower shop, who was also best man at our wedding. He was old enough to be Mike's father, but we both loved him and wanted him to stand up with us. Mike started as his delivery driver, but eventually learned to do flower arrangements. Someone else took over driving the truck. I mention this because Mike was responsible for a lot of the flowers on display that day, and he made my bridal bouquet. The picture below was taken by a family friend. I'm showing it so you can see the bouquet. I've always loved this picture. That bride looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. The groom looks a little shell-shocked.

So we'll celebrate with dinner out tonight, and otherwise, we'll have our usual day. Weeding and cleaning are up first, but then I really hope I'll make significant progress on my challenge piece today.